Wikipedia Preview
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Wikipedia Preview
Summary content from Wikipedia articles
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Wikipedia Preview allows you to provide context from Wikipedia about words or phrases on any website.
It lets you show a popup card with a short summary from Wikipedia when a reader hovers over a link. It is available as a standalone JavaScript component for any website, as a WordPress Plugin, and an R package for use with R Markdown documents & websites.
Background
When readers navigate in and out of a webpage through interacting with several hyperlinks, they can easily lose context of what they were reading in the first place. Content sites would like their readers to read and engage with their content and understand it without having to get contextual information elsewhere. Wikipedia Preview can solve this problem for content providers by allowing readers to have concise and visual contextual information from Wikipedia within a content provider’s mobile properties - website or webapp.
The Page Previews feature on Wikipedia was created to solve the problem of context switching for desktop readers. This feature extends that functionality to external 3rd party sites. The first phase will focus on building a mobile led experience with partners whose primary readers are in emerging markets.
Wikipedia Preview would allow Wikimedia project content available as contextual information on 3rd party sites. The feature will not be restricted to only showing the first sentences of a Wikipedia article, it will be as diverse as showing information from sister projects which could be images, definitions or even reading much more of an article directly on the content provider’s website.
This feature is not new. It was discussed when page previews launched in 2018. Internal staff and volunteers have created similar functionality in chrome extensions, slack integrations and wordpress plugins in their personal capacity as volunteers.
The Inuka team is taking on this work as one of the ways to expose our project content to readers in emerging markets. We see this product as a way of moving away from the traditional notion of single monolithic articles and moving towards more modular and contextual learning. Wikipedia Preview on partner websites would allow their readers to gain context while reading their pages and:
- Help people gain contextual knowledge from Wikipedia without necessarily clicking through to Wikipedia
- Learn more on Wikipedia with the option being available to read more on Wikipedia
Goals & Objectives
- Increase reach of Wikipedia content in Emerging Markets as part of the goal to become the essential infrastructure of free knowledge
- Partner with sites in emerging markets whose readers would benefit from contextual knowledge from Wikipedia
Assumptions & Hypothesis
- Displaying Wikipedia content on 3rd party sites would; grow the ecosystem of interacting with Wikipedia content on the internet and drive awareness and using Wikipedia for contextual information
Design Research
The Wikipedia preview plugin research was conducted in September to November of 2023 and in partnership with Hureo Research and the support of the Design Research team, Eli Asikin-Garmager and Bethany Gerdemann. The research investigates the user experience of Wikipedia Preview from the perspective of website owners and readers of websites with the plugin enabled.
Findings from the research uncovered key areas of improvement by observing users interact with the tool and asking them specific questions about their experience. Below is a tabulated summary of the main discoveries from this research. The Inuka team has prioritized the feedback for action starting January 2024. You can track the progress of the action items in this ticket.
| User Type | Research observation and participants' feedback | Completed Tasks |
| New Site owners: |
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| Existing Site owners: |
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| Readers |
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Feature Highlights
Current Status
| Fiscal year | Milestones |
| 2019-20 | Q1 2019/2020
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| 2020-21 | Q1 2020/2021
Q2 - 2020/2021
Q3 - 2020/2021
Q4 - 2020/2021
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| 2021-22 | Q1 2021/2022
Q2-2021/2022
Q4-2021/2022
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| 2022-23 | Q1-2022/2023
Q2-2022/2023
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| 2023-24 | Q1-2023/2024
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Partnerships
We collaborated with the regional partnerships team to secure partnerships for Wikipedia Preview for almost 1 year. These partners included:
- Right for education
- SWA Magazine
- BE EDUCATION ADVENTURES (BeED)
- Good news from Indonesia
- Global Child Prodigy Awards
- SMEX
Metrics
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 (Jan-Aug) | |
| Wikipedia Preview total weekly previews | 491 | 30,008 | 163,264 | 236,082 |
| Wikipedia Preview-referred pageviews | 30 | 724 | 2026 | 7,754 |
| Wikipedia Preview clickthrough rate (average) | 5.2% | 2.5% | 1.2% | 3.4% |
Feedback
We've actioned direct feedback from partners and wordpress plugin site owners regarding certain features and functionalities; a lot of them have been documented and actioned below. On top of feedback, we have also used different metrics to guide which improvements to prioritise on the product.
1. Improve Onboarding & Feedback experience on the wordpress page
- Improve the download, installation & post-activation instructions on Wordpress.
- Increase avenues for site owners to share feedback and reviews.
- Fix the rating trigger for Wordpress users.
2. Improve Plugin Embedding & Reading Experiences
- Improve styling of the Preview link.
- Adding customisation instructions for site owners who wanted to explore different preview styles.
Lessons Learnt
1. Product Market Fit: the slow and steady increase in previews and page views over the last 2+ years indicate that the product remains useful and would benefit from further improvements on the readers & site-owner /partner experience. This work has now been prioritised for 2023/24.